Monday, February 06, 2017

7 Posts: Addiction in "Crazy Ex-Girfriend"

It was a busy weekend, but the season end of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" happened so I am going to dive in and do 7 posts again.

We picked up pretty much where we left off with Rebecca and Josh post-coital in a car and then the realization that maybe sex didn't solve everything as Rebecca started to plan her whole life around Josh and Josh felt the weight of that and then Rebecca trying to dial back her declaration. But the elephant in the room was that while Rebecca felt that her relationship with Greg was over when she tried to share feelings and he was too drunk to appreciate that, even she knew she had to officially talk to him. Except he was gone. Not answering texts or calls. Not showing up to work. And not answering the door. So, Rebecca employed her stalking skills and managed to discover he was in AA.

It turned out to be court mandated, after he woke up just sober enough to realize Rebecca had been trying to share feeling, but apparently not sober enough to drive. I had hoped that this season might focus really specifically on addiction. I confess, I always think about one of the interventionists on "Intervention" talking about how love and addiction activate similar pleasure centers in the brain. And well, Greg sobered up, sang a few songs about how drunk he'd been, and a lovely ditty about toxic relationships, and then went off to pursue his college dreams at Emory.

This isn't to say they dropped addiction altogether this season, this is to say that the focus shifted back to other coping mechanisms. But I enjoyed it both as an opportunity to see how the viewpoint filter of the show, for all that it shows us, still sometimes only hints at deeper things some of the non-titular characters are experiencing. After all, it was mildly surprising to discover that Greg had gone well beyond adorable, recreational drunk, but, except to Josh, the signs had all been there.